Undaunted Courage
Stephen E. Ambrose
Reviewed by Charles G. Eads
Company driver for S&J Transportation
Yeadon, Pa.
Listening time: 22 hours
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Retail: $49.95
Genre: History
Plot: At the command of President Thomas Jefferson, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark pioneer exploration of America’s new West between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean (1804-6).
Main characters: Meriwether Lewis is a determined but flawed man. William Clark is a solid companion to Lewis. Together they make a winning team.
What’s best (or not)? I think it is probably historically accurate. I did think it was a bit too long for an unabridged book.
Would you recommend? Yes, it’s a good book for any U.S. history buff.
Narrator’s style: Barrett Whitener is very good. I like the fact that he did not try to mimic voices and accents.
What would you rate the book? A
The Honored Society
Michael Gambino
By birth and breeding, Michael D’Angelo is fated to become a major player in the powerful D’Angelo crime family. Schooled in violence as a boy in the Chicago suburbs of the early 1970s, he’s sharp enough to realize that his childhood is over when he sees his first slain body. At the age of seventeen he makes his first hit. One year later, he’s a “made man,” inducted into the syndicate’s most secret and powerful league. His life course is set. Groomed for criminal success, Michael D’Angelo will rise in the ranks of the Honored Society to become more ruthless, ambitious and unflinching than the father he idolized.
The Honored Society
4.5 hours
Retail: $25
Simon & Schuster Audio
Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones grew up poor on the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side, brushing against the law and feeling the pain of his mother’s descent into madness. But when his father moved the family west to Seattle, he took up the trumpet and was literally saved by music. Quincy’s string of unbroken triumphs in the entertainment industry has been shadowed by a turbulent personal life, a story he shares with eloquence and candor.
Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones
7 hours
Retail: $26
Simon & Schuster Audio
What If?
Edited by Robert Cowley
There is no surer way to feel the danger, or the good fortune, of our collective past than to contemplate those moments when the world’s future hung in the balance. Our brightest historians speculate on some of these intriguing crossroads and the ways in which our lives might have been changed for the better – or the worse.
These unabridged essays range across the full span of history. Geoffrey Parker describes ramifications that might have included a divided Reformation movement, a strengthened Catholic leadership and no European settlements in the Americas. Caleb Carr argues that we could have been spared the horrific last six months of World War II in Europe if Eisenhower had seized his chance to destroy the Nazis in the fall of 1944.
What If?
6 hours
Retail: $26
Simon & Schuster Audio
Separation of Power
Vince Flynn
CIA director Thomas Stansfield is dead – and many individuals in the nation’s capital are pleased to hear it. However, their happiness is short-lived because Stansfield’s successor, his protégé Dr. Irene Kennedy, plans on pursuing his goals.
Israel has discovered that Saddam Hussein is close to entering the nuclear arms race and they’ve vowed to stop the Iraqi madman before he can get his hands on the ultimate weapon. With the Middle East teetering on the precipice of chaos and devastation, the president of the United States is forced to act.
The commander in chief’s secret weapon? None other than the CIA’s top counter-terrorism operative, Mitch Rapp. With the haunting specter of World War III looming, Rapp races against time and impossible odds, navigating the deadly alleys of Baghdad, tearing through the corruption-riddled streets of Washington, D.C.
Separation of Power
5 hours
Retail: $26
Simon & Schuster Audio
Drivers, here is your chance to review the latest audiobooks. Tell our readers what you like or dislike about the plot and characters and why you would recommend it to other drivers. Below are just a few of the audiobooks available in the Truckers News audiobook library. Contact Jodi Black at (800) 633-5953 ext. 1364 or via e-mail at [email protected] to reserve an audiobook. It will be sent to you free of charge for your review. Audiobooks areavailable on a first-call, first-served basis.
